Sunday, February 15, 2009

A few places to visit

In a few weeks my bike rides will start to stretch out the mileage so I can start training for the Longest Day (and possibly a new Princeton Freewheeler Double Century ride). In the mean time I still need to lead winter rides, a time for building a base. My friend Mark suggested that I keep it to less than 50 miles as I hadn't been riding for the last three weeks, I just got over the flu and my chest is pretty much congested. So I came up with a Mid-Winter's Ride (54 miles). It includes sections I normally do when I do lunch time rides or late night rides. Seeing how I'm going to start commuting to work I won't get much time for those and still get what I need to do for the day. I chose the route just so I can visit some different places. Now I probably should have listened to Mark's advice on the ride length but I wanted to ride. I knew it would push me past my limits (0 miles for the past 3 weeks, a jump to 80+ miles this week, and not so good lungs). Every thing felt fine until the last few miles where my lungs were sore (that's not good). It didn't help that my cable snapped for my rear derailleur (early in the ride) and I was stuck with a two speed. Still it was a nice ride and my lungs feel much better today (as long as I don't laugh ;-).

The weather for the week looks like I'll be able to commute to work on Tuesday (20 miles each way) but I'll probably only be able to do a late night ride on Thursday night. Next Saturday looks to be more of the same , cold, possible snow. I may plan out a metric but I'm not sure. If I can't lead Saturday I'll do another group ride on Sunday. Possibly ride to and from the group ride to get my additional miles. So next week I hope to have more than 100 miles for the week. Not bad for February! :-)

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